


Teamwork

by MillyVeil



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Actually it's more like Suck or Die, Angst, BAMF Clint Barton, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Blood and Violence, Casual Sex, Clint Barton Feels, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Comfort, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established relationship (but not really), Fuck Or Die, Insecure Clint Barton, Mission Fic, Misunderstandings, No Mercy, Non-Consensual Oral Sex, Oral Sex, Original Character Death(s), Sexual Coercion, Strike Team Delta, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-07-20 20:41:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16145108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MillyVeil/pseuds/MillyVeil
Summary: Bad guys want to see some of that famed Delta teamwork.Lesson of the day: Be careful what you wish for.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is yet another fuck-or-die story. Actually, no, it's not. It's a suck-or-die story. Nothing more. Nothing less. If you expect a deep and meaningful psychosocial commentary on the aftermath of coerced oral sex you'll be sorely disappointed.
> 
> (However, if you're looking for angst and h/c there will be some in the second part of this story).

Clint stumbles as he’s dragged out of the vehicle. There’s a blindfold over his eyes and his hands are securely tied behind his back. The Mace burns like acid, his eyes and nose are running freely and saliva keeps building up in his mouth as his body tries to get rid of the severe chemicals. He coughs wetly, viciously satisfied to hear that his captors are all coughing and sniffling, too. Even second-hand exposure to Mace in a confined space like the back of that van is pretty damn unpleasant.

The blindfold is secured around his head with several loops of duct tape. Overkill, he thinks as they haul him forward. It’s not like he would be able to see much anyway, thanks to the pepper spray. He tries to blink behind the blindfold, tries to lessen the fierce burning in his eyes. Every inch of skin that was exposed to the spray hurts, and he’s desperate to get his hands free, to scrub at his face, but there’s zero give in the ties that bind him.

Something on the ground makes him stumble heavily, but the two assholes who are dragging him along apparently have no interest in letting him recover his balance, because they keep going and his knees scrape painfully against the uneven ground. He knows there’s another guy somewhere up ahead, he can hear the sound of his steps. He struggles to get his feet under himself, and manages just as a hard, clanking sound is heard.

The sudden change in temperature and acoustics tells him they’re taking him into a building of some kind. A few seconds later he hears the sound of another door opening and he’s pushed forward. The loss of visual input combined with the fact that his hands are tied behind him means there’s no way to compensate when from one step to the next his boot suddenly finds only empty space where the floor should be. As he goes head over heels he has half a second to hope that he’s not tumbling down a long flight of stairs. A moment later he lands hard on his side. His head bounces off the ground with enough force that the darkness behind the blindfold lights up with sparks. The taste of blood fills his mouth. He hears several unseen someones laugh, and then he’s dragged to his feet again. Warm wetness runs down his chin as he’s maneuvered around. Fuck. Feels like he took a sizable chunk out of his tongue when his teeth clacked together.

Fingernails dig cruelly in under the tape that holds the blindfold. The adhesive sticks to his stinging skin and tugs at his hair and he hisses as it is pulled off. When it’s gone he manages to crack his eyes open a fraction, blinking rapidly against the pain and the still streaming tears. His head pounds from the knock on the floor, deeply and viciously, but he shoves the discomfort away, because he needs to get his bearings. When the hands on him let go, he hunches forward with a pitiful groan. He lets a trickle of blood dribble to the floor, playing up his injuries. He makes use of the movement to camouflage the way he scans the surroundings.

The room he’s been taken into is not a room. It’s a small, dingy garage. Semi-professional from the looks of things, but the place is a mess. Oil and grease stains cover the floor. Every available surface taken up by junk and car parts and mismatched tool sets. An inner door at the top of a two-step staircase. Must have been the one through which they had come. An outer door sits next to the large garage doors that face the front of the building. The garage has space to house three cars. One space is empty, but the other two are occupied. The nearest one holds a banged up white Nissan with rust spreading like leprosy from the wheel well up the side of the driver's door. A black Mercedes is parked in the middle bay. It looks out of place with its gleaming chrome and shiny paintjob. Stolen, no doubt, and probably destined to be disemboweled in a matter of hours. The job has already begun. Panels are missing inside, wiring has been exposed and cut off, and a hand-operated winch dangles over the open engine compartment. Its chains are already attached to the engine block.

A mechanic in stained coveralls and with a very obviously caved-in head lies dead in a pool of blood next to the grease pit.

Clint straightens up with some more groaning. There are four people in the room, not counting himself and the dead mechanic. He recognizes everyone. To his left is Seeley, Breton’s body guard. He’s big, a head and a half taller than Clint and comes across like he’s a few points shy of average intelligence. Clint knows better than to underestimate him, though. To the right is Terrence Poole. He’s looking every bit like the meth head he is. The only reason he’s part of the organization is that he happens to be Breton’s nephew. The third man in the room is Joseph Sharpton, Breton’s second in command. British. Served in the first Gulf war. Dishonorably discharged from the S.A.S. eight years ago after being convicted of sexual assault. Clint knows everything about these guys, down to their shoe sizes and what brand of toothpaste they buy. Which also means he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that all three of them are armed. They don’t leave bed without their weapons.

There is one last person in the room. That’s Natasha.

She stands at the far end of the space by the outer garage doors. Her arms are crossed tightly over her chest and she’s curled in on herself a little. She’s projecting a carefully tempered air of _small_ and _scared_ , but she looks unhurt.

Her usual looks are toned way down. Her hair is straight and a mousy brown color. She’s wearing glasses and her clothes have been carefully chosen for a woman on a budget who tries to dress fashionably but is unable to get neither cut nor fit quite right. Natasha has spent almost two months befriending Breton’s girlfriend, trying to get close and gain access that way. Clint’s part of the job had been three weeks of surveillance work, and then this past week his front had been a service technician, working on a cable network glitch in Breton’s building that ‘mysteriously’ kept coming and going. It had been a long, boring job, but earlier tonight all the pieces had finally slotted into place and Natasha had walked out with a flash drive filled with incriminating evidence not just against Breton’s group, but more importantly against the much larger international network he was involved in, the one SHIELD had their sights set on. Breton was just a small fish in a large pond, an easy access point.

The intel they had gathered had been dispatched to SHIELD by courier within the hour, and the two of them had gone their separate ways. But apparently neither of them had gotten very far. Clint had been snagged just as he walked up to the rented car. The liberal dose of Mace straight to the face had put him out of commission long enough for them to wrestle him into the back of a van. He looks Natasha over one more time and wonders how they picked her up. She looks unhurt. No bruises. Her clothes don’t look like she’s been in a fight.

He gets a shove in the back and stumbles forward.

“Who are you. What do you want from me?” Natasha asks Sharpton. Her voice is pitched a fraction higher than usual, fear tugging at her words. It’s something that doesn’t mesh with Natasha Romanoff on a job. It’s something that doesn’t mesh with Natasha Romanoff, period, which means she’s still maintaining her cover, and it’s a strategy that Clint is more than happy to play along with. If they’re lucky they might still be able to bullshit their way out of this.  

He coughs and tries to wipe his face on his shoulder. Everything is still a bit foggy and hazy halos float around every light source, but there’s nothing really wrong with his eyes. Other than the fact that they hurt like a motherfucker and he’d be a happy man if he could close them and never open them again. “Do you want money?” he asks Sharpton. “Is that it? I can get money. I’ll call my uncle, he’s very rich—“

Sharpton’s gun comes out and Natasha makes a breathy, scared sound next to him. “You think you’re so smart,” he sneers.

“I don’t know what—“

“Shut up.” Sharpton pulls his phone out and motions Seeley and Poole over. “Do you know who we got here?” He angles the small screen their way. Clint sees Seeley’s thick brows lower and then a look of dark venom is turned on him.

Poole suddenly looks even twitchier and he reaches into his jacket. He pulls out his gun and fumbles as he tries to chamber a round. “Let’s just kill them right now.” 

“Wait,” Sharpton orders sharply. “Boss man wants to talk to them.” He waits until Poole lowers his gun, then turns back to Clint and Natasha. “We know you’re SHIELD,” he tells them.

Fuck, this is not good. How the hell does he know that?

Sharpton looks back at his phone. “To be honest, I kinda expected more.” He steps in closer and shows the phone to Clint who blinks rapidly and tries to make his vision less blurry. When he manages his stomach goes tight. It’s a screen shot of his profile from one of SHIELD’s deepest databases. He can’t see enough details yet to make out if it’s the one with the fake info, the one used for administration and other trivial things, or if it’s the real one. Both have a mug shot of him, and he sees himself glower back from the small screen.

“You thought I wouldn’t realize we’re being watched?” Sharpton continues. “I’m not an idiot.” 

Clint knows full well that Sharpton is a clever strategist, but on one important subject he begs to disagree with the blanket non-idiot statement, because sure, Clint istied up securely, but Natasha isn’t. That means Sharpton has pegged him as more of a threat than her, and that’s a big, big mistake.

Sharpton swipes his finger across the display and Natasha’s file is displayed. “We should feel honored, boys,” he tells the other two over his shoulder. “My sources say that not only are they SHIELD, they’re pretty much SHIELD royalty.”

“What? What do you mean?” Poole still looks nervous.

Sharpton sweeps his hand in Clint and Natasha’s direction. “I give you the fabled STRIKE team Delta.”

Seeley makes a low rumbling noise that makes Clint think of large and vicious dogs. He keeps his head down, doesn't give away any reaction to the words, but shit, this is trouble on a whole different scale. The existance of Delta is definitely not common knowledge. Someone at SHIELD with access to a fuckload of classified things is leaking intel. To the highest bidder? Published somewhere on darknet, WikiLeaks style?

“Know what? I’m not sure I believe this.” Sharpton waves the phone and the image on it. His voice has taken on a mean, calculating note. “There’s no way these two are SHIELD’s top guns. What do you think?” he asks his cohorts.

Seeley just keeps glaring at Clint. During the weeks that Clint had been listening in, he never once heard the man speak.

“Sure don’t look like much,” Poole laughs nervously.

Sharpton grins at Clint and Natasha. It’s not a nice sight. “I think you need to show us some of that famed teamwork to convince us it’s really true.”  

“Sure,” Clint tells him lightly. No use trying to maintain cover now. “Who wants to die first?”

Their three captors laugh. Clint smiles back. The files these guys have are either the sanitized ones, which give no specifics about their jobs, or there’s some serious over-confidence at work here. He doesn’t care which it is, either will work to their advantage.

Right now there’s no realistic chance to fight their way out of this, not with Clint tied up and at least three guns in the room. None of them in their hands. What they need to do is give these guys enough rope to hang themselves with. Not restraining Natasha has gotten them some length, but they need more. The odds are still stacked heavily against them.  

“You know, there are rumors about you,” Sharpton tells Natasha. He gives her a very deliberate head to toe look. 

“Really? All good I hope,” she says, her voice warm and velvet soft, but there’s an edge hidden underneath that Clint recognizes. There’s nothing demure about her now, nothing cowering or scared. The Black Widow has emerged, and this moron seems utterly oblivious to the fact as he steps closer.

Clint works at keeping his body language neutral as he gauges Sharpton’s position, the way he holds himself, Natasha’s stance, the proximity of the other two. Sharpton is well trained in hand-to-hand, but with the element of surprise on her side, Natasha could still probably disarm and disable him in a matter of seconds. But Poole and Seeley are still out of her reach, and Poole still has his gun in his hand, so there’s more than a decent risk that both of them would end up dead if she tries.

“I want you to suck his cock,” Sharpton tells her.  

The room goes very silent for a few moments.

Okay. Clint did _not_ see that one coming.

Seeley shows his yellow teeth in a wide grin when Sharpton shoves Natasha towards Clint. She stumbles into him.

Poole snickers. “Joe, you sick fuck.”

Natasha remains pressed up against his side, doesn’t move, but Sharpton’s gun does, it comes to point straight at Clint’s head.

“You heard me. Suck. His. Cock.”  

Clint keeps his breathing even and tries to keep the tension from his shoulders, but that’s a hard thing to accomplish with the black eye of a barrel staring him down. He has heard of this, of assholes getting off on humiliating and degrading captives like this, but as much shit as he and Natasha have been through together over the years, this is a first for them. Hopefully it’s just posturing, nothing more than threats and intimidation.

“You don’t want to do this.” The razor’s edge in Natasha’s voice has moved closer to the surface.  

Sharpton leers at her. “Pretty sure I do. Move.”

When Natasha still doesn’t move, Sharpton fires into the floor next to Clint’s feet. The sound is brutally sharp and painful in the enclosed area, and Clint ducks his head against the stinging shards of concrete that go flying everywhere. Overlaid with gunshot he hears a flat ‘plink’ and when he raises his head, he sees that the bullet has ricocheted into the garage door, leaving a round hole in the flimsy metal.

“You got to the count of five to get his cock in your mouth or the next one goes through his head.”

Jesus Christ. The guy is really serious about this. 

“One.”

Natasha holds Sharpton’s gaze for another beat, then she steps in front of Clint, coming to face him with her back to the room. She reaches for his belt. Over her shoulder, Clint glances at the mechanic lying dead by the Mercedes. He hopes Breton is far, far away, and that traffic is a bitch. They need all the time they can get here.

“Two.”

His zipper hardly makes a sound as Natasha’s pulls it down. 

The gun hasn’t moved, and he clenches his teeth as her fingers snake over the lining of his pants and his underwear. They’ll get through this, too, he reminds himself. They just need to stay alive until these fuckers make that one crucial mistake that will give them their opening.

“Three.

Natasha makes eye contact with him. “Eyes front and center,” she says under her breath, quiet enough that only he can hear.

When Clint nods, more with his eyes than his head, she pushes his pants down a few inches, just barely below his hips. Clint locks his eyes on the oil-stained wall on the other side of the garage. Her fingers are cold on his skin as she works his cock free from the fabric, and he hears Poole snicker how they should show Natasha what a real man feels like. Clint tunes it out as she gets down on her knees in front of him in a smooth, graceful move.

“Four.”

The room is silent.

For a second, just as Sharpton says ‘Five’ he feels Natasha's breath ghosting hot and moist against his skin before her fingers wrap around him and she takes him in her mouth.

The soft, wet heat of her mouth feels foreign and horribly wrong in this situation, and he can't help glance down. She looks up at him through her lashes and there’s nothing but determination in her eyes. _Get your head in the game, Barton_ , she’s telling him without words, and he takes a deep breath and tries to blank his mind when she takes him deeper.

He doesn’t waste his breath telling these assholes how he’s going to kill them all the moment he gets the chance.

“That’s a good girl,” Sharpton says.  

“This is unbelievable. Wait until the others hear about this,” Toole cackles. His nervousness is gone, replaced with a fervent kind of glee. Something flashes, and Clint realizes he’s holding his phone, taking pictures. Possibly recording.

The garage goes quiet around them again, apart from the rustle of movement as they position themselves to see better. Clint has to work hard at not closing his eyes, because he can’t give anything away, but there’s nothing good about this. A quick glance tells him they’re raptly staring at Natasha’s mouth around his cock. Sharpton looks smug, Seeley is still scowling, and Poole now looks like he wants to palm himself through his jeans.

“Aw, look at him, he’s cwying, ”Poole leers and his camera flashes again.

Clint knows that’s what it looks like. His eyes and nose are still running freely from the Mace. He’s more than fine with letting them believe this sick little game of theirs is getting to him like that. The surprise on their faces when he kills them will be all the more satisfying.

Natasha starts moving and Clint concentrates on the the points of contact; her mouth around him, her hand resting lightly on his thigh for balance, her other hand wrapped around the base of his cock. Even without looking down he can see the top of her head move. He wishes he could tune out, but he needs to stay in the moment and be ready to take these fuckers out the moment they fuck up and it’s game over for them.

Pressure and wetness and suction. No frills. Natasha knows just how to bring him to the edge quickly. Embarrassingly quickly at times, and she’s not wasting time here, she’s trying to make this as quick as possible, but the situation is what it is and the sting of the Mace, the gun aimed at his head and the bastards watching is working against him, so it still takes time for his body to get with the program and respond.

“Stop,” Sharpton suddenly orders.  

Natasha lets his hard cock slip out of her mouth and sits back on her heels. She doesn’t turn to look at Sharpton, just waits.

“You’re a team, right? So I think it’s just fair if you did some of the work too,” Sharpton tells Clint. "I want you to fuck her mouth. You,” he says and points at Natasha, "get your back against the wall.”

Natasha doesn’t hesitate. She shuffles on her knees to the wall next to Clint and turns to face the room.

Clint is ordered to turn around.

“Make one wrong move and you die,” Sharpton tells Clint. The next second he feels the cold steel of a blade slide between his bound wrists, then he's free. Look at that, he thinks, more rope. With his hands free their chances of succeeding with _anything_ to get them out just increased quite a bit. An added bonus is that he can finally scrub at his stinging eyes. God, it's such a relief.  

“Well, what are you waiting for? Fuck her face.”

Clint starts to move, but apparently not fast enough, because Sharpton punches him in the back and Clint’s breath hitches from the pain. Fucker. He carefully steps to straddle Natasha’s folded knees, and looks down at her. He almost cringes at the sight of his cock, glistening with saliva, level with her face.

Her eyes meet his. They’re still steady, still calm. He tries to convey ‘I’m so sorry’ and ‘Let’s do this’, and ‘First chance we get we’ll kill them. Messily. Deal?’

She gives a very neutral blink of her eyes he knows she read him loud and clear.

He moves forward a few inches and Natasha rises on her knees, sliding her back up the wall to get her face at the right level. She opens her mouth, takes his cock in again. He puts his hands flat on the wall, unwilling to put his hands on her for this, and pushes forward a little. Her lips seal around him, and he takes a slow deep breath and pushes in.

A hand at the small of his back pushes him forward, and Clint takes a split second to visualize how easy and gratifying it would be to twist around and snap that arm, but below him Natasha makes a choking sound as he goes too deep, and he doesn’t even contemplate going through with it, because they still have a chance of getting out of there alive, but that requires not being stupid. It requires playing along with their game, as fucked up as it is.

So he pushes into Natasha’s mouth, along the slick slide of her tongue, and he knows she hates it, hates not being able to set the pace, the depth, the angle. Hates not being in control. He keeps his hands pressed against the cool wall. Not touching her is just about the only control he has to offer her right now.

“I said, fuck her face!” Sharpton orders. He shoves Clint into Natasha again, and she makes another harsh, coughing sound around Clint’s cock, but doesn’t try to twist away. Her eyes water, and he knows it’s just a reaction to the gagging, he _knows_ that _,_ but it’s still horrible. 

“Fuck, yeah,” Poole mutters appreciatively. “That’s what I want to hear.”

To their left, Seeley is leaning against the wall at a safe distance, his arms crossed over his chest. His body language projects boredom, but there’s an intensity in the way he’s watching them that belies that. Natasha’s hands come up to wrap around the back of Clint's legs, around his pants that are still just barely down over his hips. She pulls him forward. Sweat trickles down his back and he gives silent thank to the fact that his brain is still deeply and mercifully in mission mode, because he knows that’s the only reason he’s able to do this. He widens his stance a fraction and starts moving harder, concentrating on nothing but the wet, slick friction and the heat. Just the sensation, not the person behind it, because if he does, he’ll never finish, he will prolong this unnecessarily, and this isn’t something he wants to drag out.

He wants it over so he can get to the killing them messily part.

“Grab her hair,” Seeley says. His voice is surprisingly light for someone that big. And look at that, he’s not quite as disinterested as he seems.  

Clint ignores it, because Sharpton is very clearly the boss in the room and Clint isn’t doing anything in this context he doesn’t absolutely have to.

“You heard the man,” Sharpton says.

Clint grits his teeth and reluctantly puts his hands on the sides of her head, curls his fingers along the curve of her skull. The hair at her temples is already damp with sweat. He rubs the pads of his fingers minutely against her scalp and tries to communicate again how fucking sorry he is for having to do this. He gets a reply in the form of her fingers squeezing his legs and he wraps his fingers in her hair and starts moving with purpose, because if this is what he has to do to keep them alive, then he will do it. Nothing more to it.  

The pace he sets is hard and fast. He feels her throat work around him as she swallows and takes him even deeper. She manages a few strokes before she gags again, tensing and shuddering. Clint keeps moving, keeps fucking her face as shallowly as he can get away with. He licks his dry, burning lips and desperately wants this to be over.

Poole keeps coming with suggestions and comments, but Sharpton stays silent and in his head Clint runs through scenario after scenario of getting the hell out of there and leaving no one alive. He feels overheated and numb, but he doesn’t slow down, just keeps fucking into Natasha’s wet mouth. Each thrust produces a wet, lewd sound, and he hates it.

Natasha is talented, but there’s nothing enjoyable about it, just a chase for something that isn’t meant to happen like this. But he’s exceedingly good at compartmentalizing, so eventually he feels himself getting closer. It’s still a slow, laborious rise towards completion, and when it finally, _finally_ comes, it’s with no sound at all and a feeling of hollow relief more than anything.

He lets go of her immediately and takes an unsteady step back. Behind him, Poole cheers. Natasha sits back on her heels and coughs. She wipes the back of her hand across her glistening mouth as she swallows. He tries to school his breathing, but he feels out of air, like his lungs are too tight as he quickly tucks himself into his pants. He’s sticky and wet. His hands feel shivery and he tells himself to get a fucking grip. They’re not out of there yet, there’s still work to be done.

Natasha gets to her feet and runs her hands over her hair to tame the flyaway strands, casual as you like, like he hadn’t just held her in place and fucked her face.  

“Over there,” Sharpton orders and points towards the middle of the floor.

He pulls Natasha towards him by the arm, gun held carelessly in the other, and Seeley moves in on Clint. Clint doesn’t have to look at Natasha to know she spots the moment, too. Both of them are within easy reach of a weapon and both of them are conveniently shielded from the only other gun in the room by a body.

Clint resists as Seeley grabs him and tries to pull him along. The beauty of pulling backwards is that when one suddenly switches to pushing, the other person is usually unbalanced for a short moment. Clint uses that advantage to the fullest as he goes from pulling to tackling Seeley. Behind him he hears Sharpton give a sharp cry that is suddenly cut off. Poole is shouting. Clint doesn’t have the time to check on Natasha before he and Seeley hit the floor heavily, tumbling into a tool cart with a metallic crash. Tools and spare parts clatter to the floor. Clint grabs for the gun at the small of Seeley’s back, painfully aware that he needs to get Seeley between him and Poole’s gun again, because the likelihood that Clint is about to take a bullet to the head from that direction in the next two seconds is pretty high.

But just as Clint’s fingers close on the butt of the gun, Seeley manages to land an uncoordinated, meaty fist on the side of his head and everything goes flat and bright for a moment. He distantly hears the sound of the gun skittering across the floor. Then Seeley flips him easy as anything, and Clint’s back hits the floor. Seeley is on top of him in a heartbeat, his face red and furious. There’s barely enough time for Clint to get an arm up to block the punch, and he twists to the side, hand fumbling across the floor to his right for something to use as a weapon. His fingers brush across something long and narrow just as Seeley’s huge hands wrap around his neck. The pressure is enough to cut his air off immediately, and fuck, he claws at Seeley with his free hand. The bastard is going to crush his windpipe. He hears a gun go off, but can’t tell if it’s Sharpton’s or Poole’s. He twists again and manages to get a grip on the item, a large screwdriver he realizes. He swings it up and stabs it into the side of Seeley’s neck.

The pressure on his throat disappears instantly, and as he coughs and tries to catch his breath again, Seeley’s mouth open and close without a sound. Seeley’s hand comes up to the side of his neck, and he paws clumsily at the screwdriver handle for a moment. Then he wraps his fingers around it and pulls it out with a roar. The sharp spray of blood paints the side of the Nissan and as Seeley starts choking on it Clint manages to get out from under him.

Clint dives towards the cover of the car and crouches next to it. He glances behind him to see a pool of blood growing rapidly under Seeley. He spots Seeley’s wayward gun on the floor resting against the outer garage door. He considers going for it for about a second and a half, then nixes it, because it would put him out in the open, and he has no idea what the story is on the other side of the garage. He crawls towards the back of the car, and sticks his head out for a second to check.

Sharpton lies slumped on the floor next to Natasha’s feet and Poole is backing away from her, blood running from his fingers onto the floor. His gun is nowhere to be seen. Sharpton’s Glock rests in Natasha’s hand and Clint makes an educated guess that the bullet that put Poole’s arm out of commission came from it. Poole must have caught a hint of movement from Clint’s direction, because he swivels his head around and stares at Clint with wide open eyes. He turns and makes a run for the interior door.

Natasha is on his back before he’s halfway across the room. She takes him down with ease. It’s bloody and it’s brutal. And later, Clint thinks it was way too fast for the bastard.

He slowly gets to his feet and limps towards her. “You okay?” he asks. His voice is rough and hoarse from Seeley’s grip around his throat.

“Yeah.” She sounds a little breathless from the short grapple. “You?”

”Yeah.”

A wet, choking sound is heard from behind, and they both turn. Seeley’s fingers claw against the concrete floor and for a few seconds the two of them stand there and watch him slide closer to death with every labored breath.

Then Natasha shifts and Clint turns his attention back to the rest of the room. He nods towards Sharpton “Is he alive?”

“Yes.”

“Is he vital?”

“No.”

Clint finds a couple of short zipties, zips three of them together and secures Sharpton’s hands behind his back. He then spends a few minutes rinsing his still stinging face over the dirty sink while Natasha siphons gas from the Mercedes.

“How’s the head,” she asks. He hears her pouring the gas across the floor and the work benches.   

He splashes one last handful of water on his face. “Nothing an Advil or two won’t cure." He heads back to Sharpton and drags him by the ankle to the sink. He uses more zipties to secure him hand and foot to the sturdiest pipe he can find.

He upends a bucket filled with water over Sharpton. As the man coughs and splutters and shakes the water from his face, Clint crouches down in front of him.

“Hello there,” he says amicably.

For a moment Sharpton doesn’t react, but then the situation and his inability to move must have registered. He tugs sharply at his hands, but the zipties are the good kind, the one with a metal clip so there will be no breaking out of them the second Clint turns his back. Sharpton starts swearing and keeps pulling uselessly at the ties. Natasha hums tunelessly under her breath as she works at the back of the garage. The splashing sound and the sharp smell of gasoline must tip Sharpton off to what she’s doing. He keeps swearing, keeps his scowl, but Clint can see fear creeping in.  

“You wanted to see us work as a team,” Clint says and sweeps his hand over the room, over the blood splatter and gore that paints the floor. Over the lifeless bodies of Seeley and Poole. “Here you go. Do you like it?”

“I’m gonna kill you,” Sharpton grinds out, but he’s looking decidedly pale now.

“Yeah, no, that’s not how this is gonna play out for you today,” Clint informs him and gets to his feet.

Natasha puts down the gas canister and holds up a box of matches. “Ready?”  

“Hang on,” Clint tells her and quickly starts frisking the dead men, relieving them of their phones. In case the fire doesn’t destroy everything he doesn’t want any evidence of their presence or what had gone down. He returns to Sharpton and pats him down too, ignoring the man’s threats and curses. He finds a key fob, ambles to the door, sticks his head out and presses one of the buttons. A black Mustang GTO outside flashes its lights in reply.

“Nice,” he mumbles.

He nods at Natasha. She strikes the match and the small flame flares into life. He sees the way she deliberately maintains cold eye-contact with Sharpton for two long seconds before she lets go and the match drops to the glistening floor. The gasoline ignites with a quiet 'whuff’ and a moment later translucent blue fire snakes along the floor.

Sharpton starts screaming as they walk out the door.

*   *   *

 


	2. Chapter 2

They leave the garage in flames behind them, the fire painting the night sky a sickly orange hue. It’s not exactly low-profile, fire fighters and police will be on the scene soon, but Clint is confident in their ability to blend into the background, and knowing that those fuckers are turning into charcoal is satisfying in a deep and meaningful way right now. 

Five minutes later they ditch the GTO behind a warehouse, but before they go scouting for the next vehicle they take a short break to watch the result of their work. Clint leans against the rear of the car and crosses his arms against the chill of the small hours. The suspension dips as Natasha heaves herself up to sit on the trunk next to him.

The fire is clearly visible from their vantage spot and they sit there in silence, watching the illuminated pillar of smoke rise into the darkness.

Clint glances over when Natasha holds out her hand. “Give me the phones.”

He digs them out and hands the three phones over. She checks one. A moment later she puts it down and tries another. “Bingo,” she mumbles.   

“No PIN?” he guesses.

“No PIN,” she confirms. She dials a number from memory and puts the phone to her ear. He hears it ringing faintly. It stops abruptly. “You have a leak,” Natasha says without a word of greeting. “A big one.”   

Clint hears someone ask something on the other side, curt and sharp, and he knows it’s Fury.

The wail of a siren starts up in the distance as Natasha gives Fury some details. Clint knows he won’t stop looking until he finds whoever it is. He may be the lyingest lying bastard there is, but there is no questioning his loyalty to SHIELD. Natasha ends the call, then removes the SIM card and pockets it before tossing the phone into the darkness beyond the crumbling asphalt. The other two phones follow a second later.  

A distant concussive boom is heard, and they both look towards the fire. Clint’s money is on one of the gas tanks. Probably the Nissan. Good. It will leave less evidence for the investigators to find when they start looking. And they will start looking, he knows that. The use of accelerants will be obvious. An electrical fire or one born out of a forgotten cigarette doesn’t start everywhere at once. And then there’s the small detail of three dead bodies. 

He pushes away from the car, eager suddenly to get out of there. “Let’s go home.” 

She slides down from her perch next to him and sniffs at her hands, then wipes them on her pants. He can smell the gasoline. “I need to wash off,” she tells him.   

They leave the Mustang next to the warehouse with the doors open and the keys on the driver’s seat. It won’t last the night, not in this neighborhood. A few blocks to the south, they steal a beat up little Ford. They stop at a gas station where Natasha disappears into the restroom. She comes back smelling of soap, but she must have spilled gas on her clothes, because he can still smell it. As they get back in the car, Clint strips out of his t-shirt and hands it to her before pulling his outer shirt back on. Natasha’s shirt gets to enjoy retirement in the gas station’s garbage can.  

When dawn breaks they’re fifty-five miles down the road and in another town. This one is larger, and it houses the train station that Clint had been heading towards when he was ambushed by Sharpton and company. They leave the car at the train station and split up, but they get on the same southbound train an hour later.

Clint spends an early morning one-hour train ride jammed between grumpy long-distance commuters heading to their Toronto jobs, while Natasha gets a seat in first class. He maneuvers himself into a spot where his back is free. The early morning sunlight that falls into the compartment is pale, but enough of an excuse to hide behind a pair of dark shades. He knows his eyes are still seriously blood shot from the Mace, and people notice those things, it sets off unconscious warning bells that the person in question has been up to no good, binge drinking or doing drugs or whatever. On the one hand it makes it less likely that someone would approach him, but on the other hand it makes people keep part of their attention on him and that is something Clint wants to avoid. He needs to become invisible. The shades help with that. As an added bonus they make it easier to scan his fellow travelers without being obvious about it.

The train leaves the station and he bows his head a fraction to make it look like all of his attention is on his phone in his hand. He lets his gaze sweep the crowded compartment without lifting his head. No one pays him any attention, he’s just another tired person in the midst of a large group of other tired persons, but he stays vigilant, because his and Natasha’s photos and names are in circulation and he’d rather be known for his aim than for being ‘that guy who got sloppy and was grabbed twice on the same job’.

But no one around him pings his radar and as the landscape sweeps by outside he spares a few percentages of his brain to long for a shower and clean clothes and his bed. He’s pretty sure Natasha wants to see the end of this job, too.

They get off the train, pick up an unmarked car from a car dealership silently affiliated with SHIELD, and head to the airport. Natasha sits down next to him in the uncomfortable molded plastic chairs at the gate and starts flipping through a magazine. He slides down in a deep slouch, pulls his cap over his eyes and dozes as they wait for the boarding call.

The flight is eventless and they touch down less than two hours later. They suffer stoically through the mandatory medical check-up and the initial debrief. The job, the abduction, the threats, the forced oral sex, the escape, the fire. He doesn’t sugarcoat or leave any of it out. He knows Natasha won’t, either.

*   *   *

Clint sleeps eight full hours that night, which is way more than he usually manages, but he wakes up with a headache that makes him grumpy and growly and generally unfit for human interaction. Then Natasha texts him and demands breakfast company at their usual place, and it makes things a fraction better.

She has already ordered for him when he arrives, and he hasn’t even settled in properly across from her as the waitress comes with coffee and a plate laden with eggs and bacon. He manages a wan smile and a thank you.

“You look like hell,” Natasha observes. She takes a sip of coffee and watches him over the rim. “Did you go on a bender last night?”  

“Fuck off, Romanoff,” he mutters. He reaches for the fork, spears a stripe of bacon and shoves it in his mouth. He keeps his eyes locked on his plate as he chews, but he can sense her watching him, watching and watching and watching. He finally shakes his head with a sigh. “Sorry.” He gestures with his fork towards his head. “Headache,” he explains.

“Did you take anything?”

He closes his eyes and rubs at his temples. “Need to go on a pharmacy run. I’m out of everything.”

She reaches for the tote bag she carries around when she goes shopping. Retail therapy, she calls it. Natasha getting reacquainted with Natasha after weeks of being someone else is what he calls it. She slides a pill bottle across the table and he gratefully shakes two out and downs them with his coffee.  

“Keep them,” she says when he tries to give the bottle back.

Clint leans his chin on the heel of his palm and gets working for real on breakfast. Caffeine, grease, and protein. Hopefully he’ll feel like a human being soon.      

As usual their breakfast is a fairly quiet deal. Natasha reads the newspaper she brought and Clint spends his meal furtively watching her between bites. She looks like she usually does, composed and calm and perfectly relaxed. If he didn’t know what had happened the previous night he could believe she had just returned from a week’s vacation somewhere nice.  

“Stop it, Barton,” she suddenly says without looking up.

He empties what’s left in his coffee cup, pretends he hasn’t just been caught. “Stop what?”

“You know what.” 

“What? I can’t watch a beautiful woman?”

She rolls her eyes and turns the page.

He starts pushing what’s left of the eggs on his plate around with his fork and tries to find a smooth way into the conversation he really, _really_ doesn’t want to have, but since she already called him on it he might as well get on with it. 

“Yeah, so listen…” he starts.

She puts the newspaper down. No pause, no delay, like she had been waiting for it. “Don’t. That wasn’t on you. Or on me.”

“Yeah, I know, I know, but—”

“Not buts,” she says firmly. Then the waitress approaches to top up her coffee and Natasha is silent until they’re alone again. She settles back against the backrest. “Do you really think that was even close to the worst thing I’ve done on a job?”

He knows it’s not, but this is different. This is _them._

When he doesn’t answer she leans over and puts her hand on his. “Clint.” She waits until he looks up and meets her eyes. “I’m fine.”

*    *    *

Neither of them are strangers to sexual components to a job. Clint doesn’t take assignments that specifically calls for that profile, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t slept with people to get where he needs to go, to get the job done. It’s part of the package some days.

It’s enough part of the package that SHIELD has a specialized team of counselors working only with that, and both Clint and Natasha get to sit through well-meant talks about putting the blame where it belongs, letting go of guilt, about how it’s not about sex or them personally, but about power - all things they already know. Natasha openly declares it a waste of her time, and Clint isn’t all that enthusiastic about it, either. But sadly it’s not an optional part of the post-mission song and dance routine after something like this, so they sit there in the counselor’s office later that day, separately at first and then together.They both listen obediently and take the offered extra days off without fuss.  

*    *    *

He worries that this will change things, but Natasha doesn’t act any differently. She seeks him out and they eat together, they write their reports together, hang out like they do when neither of them have anywhere else to be.

They’re okay.

*    *    *

Clint gets a wet work assignment in Acapulco. Two days in the mark does Clint’s job for him. The guy downs a bottle of Jack, puts a gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. That means Clint and the team get a day off before their flight out of there.

Somehow he ends up at a touristy bar on the other side of the city, and soon he finds himself leaning over a small table, hardcore flirting with a Norwegian chick who isn’t exactly subtle about what she’s looking for. Clint is more than fine with that. Stine is tall and blonde and gorgeous, her jokes are dirty as fuck, a girl just up his alley. Later that night when they stumble into her hotel room he’s a little drunk and his hands have been getting to know the skin under her clothes since before they got into the cab that took them there.

He pulls the hem of her shirt up, eager to get access to more, but she pushes him away.

“Patience,” she admonishes, but the gleam in her pale eyes tells him she’s teasing. She points at the bed. “Sit.”

He grins and plants his ass there. “Yes, ma’m.”  

She steps back and gives him a coy smile before hitching her fingers around the hem and starting to pull it off. Slowly. Clint leans back on his hands and enjoys the show she’s putting on. When the shirt and her skirt are history, she reaches behind her and unhooks her bra. She slowly lets it slide down her arms before letting it drop on the floor by her feet.

“Like what you see?” she asks and runs her hands up her stomach, cups the pale skin of her breasts. There is zero bashfulness in her, and God, Clint loves confident women.

“I like,” he confirms with a smile. “I’d like it even better if you were a little closer. Say,” he points next to him on the bed, “right here.”

She returns the grin and a few seconds later she’s straddling his legs, her bare chest pressed against his. “Close enough?” she grins against his lips.

He puts his hands on her ass and pulls her even closer. “It’s a good start.”  

Her skin is warm and smooth, and the next couple of minutes are spent kissing and feeling each other up properly. Then Stine scoots back and gets up. Clint misses the heat of her body immediately, but she puts a hand on his chest and pushes at him to lie down. She leans over and kisses him, holding herself up over him with one hand, the other working at his jeans, and Clint suddenly gets a sense memory of Natasha’s hands on his hips, of her wet mouth around him, the softness of her hair under his fingers, and for a split second he goes cold. His heart starts pounding in his chest.  

Stine must read something in him, because she stops. She looks down at him. “What’s wrong?”

He locks his eyes on the room behind her, concentrates on the generic poster prints on the walls, the tacky souvenirs that still have their price tags, their clothes on the floor and tries to wrench his mind away from that, tries to force it back to the moment. He shakes his head. Shakes it again. “Nothing, I just... It’s nothing.”

“You sure?” She looks down at him. Her blonde hair falls around her face and Clint wraps his hand around the back of her neck.

“I’m sure.” He tries a smile and to his relief it feels real. Feels true. The tension in him fades from his body almost as fast as it had appeared. “Come here,” he says and pulls her down for another dirty kiss.

It’s not nothing, it’s a big-ass _something_ , but it’s separate from this. Stine isn’t Natasha, this is now, not then, and above all, this is fun and he wants it, Stine wants it, and it’s all good. It’s really good and Clint doesn’t slip in time again that night.  

As dawn starts to paint the sky with light he shares a cigarette with Stine before giving her a kiss on the cheek and leaving. He gets a scribbled phone number and an invitation for an encore if he’s ever in the vicinity of Oslo.

The flight back is late in the afternoon and he gets a few hours of sleep in his own hotel room before he has to check out. He dreams of Stine, and she’s trying to tell him the difference between Mexican Spanish and Spanish Spanish, but she’s not making any sense and she seems to realize it too, because she starts laughing. Then he sees her stumble, and he grabs her to keep her from falling, but suddenly she’s fighting him. There’s no laughing and the wide sunny avenue that had framed the dream disappears. He looks down and it’s not Stine he’s holding any longer, it’s Natasha and they’re back in the small garage. This time she’s not willing and calm, this time he has to hold her down, because they’re standing over him with a gun and they’re going to kill her. It’s horrible and disjointed, and he’s holding her down on the floor, then they’re in her bed and her knife is digging into the underside of his chin as she rides him. She curses him the whole time.

*   *   *

It keeps returning to him at random times. He’s in line for food when he’s hit by the memory of the way she kept him in place when he faltered for a moment as she coughed and gagged. It’s not a flashback, just a cold shower memory that makes his hand stop in mid-motion as he reaches for a fork. He decisively pushes the image away, but the guilt sticks to his skin, follows him around like a shadow for hours.

*   *   *

A few days later he sits in a tech review meeting, bored out of his mind because sure, the unusual properties of Graphene is what makes it an exceptionally good material for all kinds of neat equipment, but he’s more interested in trying it out in real life than hearing about it, so his mind wanders. He’s not sure how his train of thought leads him from planning the rest of his day to the grungy garage, but he finds himself running through scenarios of killing Sharpton the moment he cut Clint’s ties, because he should have handled things differently, he shouldn’t have remained passive. He should have done something else. Something that wouldn’t have ended in having to force Natasha to deep throat him. He’s fully aware that he hadn’t been the only active party; the end had been his but she had been the one forced to initiate it. The fact that she hadn’t made a break for it should reassure him that he had made the right call, because if there had been a reasonable chance of success she would have gone for it, but I t doesn’t.   

Something starts prickling at the edge of his attention, and a moment later it dawns on him what it is. The room around him has gone silent. He tenses and a quick glance tells him everyone is looking at him. He realizes he’s been tapping his pen against the table. It makes a hard, sharp sound as he sets it down. He covers it with his hand and gives the room a tight, sheepish grin. The presenter gives him one last irritated glare then gets back to the presentation. Clint sits up from his slouch and for the rest of the meeting he makes himself focus on the screen and nothing else. _Nothing_ else.

Over the next few days it happens twice more, and he realizes that Natasha might be just fine with what happened, but he sure as fuck isn't.

He tries to talk to her again, tries to apologize, but she won’t have it. When he pushes, she tells him to kindly fuck off. Things get tense between them. Clint knows it’s all him, and it scares the hell out of him, because it means that he’s the one who’s allowing this to change things between them, and he can’t have that happen. Natasha Romanoff is reserved and unpredictable and an altogether difficult person to figure out, but she’s also one of the best things to ever happen to him, so he spends quite some time trying to convince himself that he's okay. That what happened wasn’t a big deal.

*   *   *

Natasha’s small room at the compound is dim, lit only by the small colored lights that adorn the ten-inch plastic Christmas tree on her desk. Clint had bought the corny, ugly thing for her a few years back for Christmas, because even though he doesn’t exactly decorate for the season, she had absolutely nothing. She had taken one look at it and declared it a hideous eyesore, but she had cleared a place for it on her desk and it has been living there ever since, Christmas season or not.

They’re on the bed, side by side, their backs to the wall. The credits for the movie they’ve been watching are rolling past on the TV. He’s nursing a beer, trying to wind down after a more or less disastrous training exercise where not only the trainees performed stupendously badly, but Clint didn’t exactly reach stellar form, either. This is a usually a good place to shake things like that off. He has spent enough time in this room, in this bed over the years to know it like his own. They’ve never been a couple in the sense that most people seem to define the word, but as far as Clint is concerned he’d take what they have any day over the kind of inherently breakable thing that is romantic love. He trusts her. It’s the foundation of everything that’s worth keeping and fighting for and the sporadic sex is just one more aspect of that. One that is pretty damn nice, but not a deal breaker if it were to never happen again. They hook up with other people, so it’s not like either one of them goes without. They’ve never been exclusive. Never expected that from the other, either.   

As the TV moves past commercials and teasers for shows coming up, Natasha sits next to him in the semi-darkness and she’s telling him about Iceland, about the glaciers there, about the hot springs she visited last time she was there, and Clint tries to be cool about all the things that are burning inside, but suddenly he can’t take it anymore.  

He interrupts her. “Can we talk about this?”  

She pauses, then takes a swig of her beer. “No.” She doesn’t ask him to clarify.

He shifts sideways on the bed and faces her full on. “This isn’t something you can just ignore, Nat.” 

She doesn’t answer, but the unspoken ‘watch me’ hangs heavily in the air between them. She picks up the remote and flips through a few channels until she finds something that she apparently deems acceptable. 

“Okay, I get it, you can ignore it, but…” He hesitates. “But what if it’s something _I_ can’t just ignore?”

“It’s in the past, Barton. Let it go. I have.”

“What the hell do you think I’ve been trying to do this whole time?”

“If it’s me you’re worried about, don't. I’m fine.”

He does worry. A little. But she’s strong, a lot stronger than he is, and the pathetic fact is that he’s the one who needs a little reassurance here. It’s not like he wants her to feel bad or be hurt or angry about all this, but he also doesn’t want her to play it off like it’s nothing, because it’s not nothing. It’s something huge and corrosive and he really needs them to be two in this, needs her to at least acknowledge that this is hard on him, that she understands that.

“I’ll blow you if that makes you feel better?” She puts the bottle down and reaches for his belt. “Show you I’m not traumatized?”  

He shoves at her hand, hard. “No, that’s not gonna make me feel better! Jesus Christ!” He glares at her.   

“Then what? What would make you feel better?”   

Good question. He scrubs at his face. Jesus, he’s so messed up. What can he say? That he’s out of shape because she’s not? Because she’s not hurting? That’s probably the most selfish thing Clint has ever heard, and he’s heard plenty. 

“Never mind. Forget it.” He should have known this talking thing was a bad idea.

“I have the feeling you’re the one who can’t do just that,” she points out.   

“Well, excuse me for not being as zen about it as you are,” he snaps and gets to his feet. 

“Come on, Barton.” She sounds annoyed now. “You're making it into more than it is.“

“Really? Then please enlighten me, what exactly is it?”

“Work. It was work. It had to be done, and it was done. Nothing more to it.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s nothing.”

“It _is_ nothing. Nothing I haven’t done before. No different.”  

“Yeah, you keep saying that,” he snaps, “but—“

He closes his mouth, because in that moment it’s suddenly crystal clear to him what has been chafing at him these past weeks. Not her insistence that she’s fine, because he actually believes that, but her insistence that this had been no different from any of the countless times she had fucked a mark to get what she wanted when sweet talking didn’t do the trick. The times she had to play the helpless victim to some maniac, the times she had to let them hurt her.

He stares at her and feels a creeping cold settle inside, because if she really means that, if she really equates him and what happened with those nameless, faceless marks from her past, then he needs to seriously reassess his assumption of where the two of them stand.

“What?” she asks. 

He blinks out of his temporary paralysis and grabs his boots, starts pulling them on in silence.

He's spent years watching her maneuver and subtly manipulate people around her to fit her agenda, but he always thought he was on the inside. Wasn't one of those people. The growing realization that he might be wrong makes him feel so achingly stupid. That’s a feeling he was once intimately acquainted with, but one he has gotten unused to over the years with SHIELD and Natasha and Phil, to the point where he obviously has forgotten how to field it effectively, because it hurts more than he remembers.

She sighs. “You’re doing it again.”  

"Doing  _w_ _hat_?” He pushes the untied laces into his boots and heads to the door. 

“Making things into more than what they are.”

Yeah, well, apparently that’s what he’s been doing for the past couple of years.

“Clint—”

He closes the door on her and her words.

*  *  *

She catches up with him right as he turns into the hallway that leads to his own quarters. 

“Clint, wait.”

"Go away."

She puts her hand on his arm. “No. I want to know what’s the matter with you.”

He shrugs her off. “Nothing.” 

“Don’t give me that,” she snaps and grabs him again.

He wrenches away, but doesn’t move out of her space, suddenly _so_ angry. “What’s the matter with me? Jesus, Romanoff, I know you don’t always get shit like this, but I can’t believe I have to spell it out to you. How about the fact that I had to fuck your face with a goddamn gun at my head. How about the fact that you just compared me to—”

Then they hear steps approaching and they both take a small step away from each other. A tech in coveralls and a tool belt comes around the corner. Her steps falter a little as she spots them, and Clint tries to dial down the aggression he feels simmering dangerously close to the surface a little, but the tech still looks tense. It must be clear as daylight that they’re having an argument, and for some reason people seem to think there’s a risk for real estate and innocent bystanders when Clint and Natasha go at it. Nothing like it has ever happened, but the stupid reaction sticks.

She gives them a tight smile as she passes. Clint returns an equally tight one, but Natasha just glares at her. By the time the tech is out of earshot, Clint has turned and is halfway down the corridor. He needs to regroup. Alone.

But he doesn’t get his wish, because he hears Natasha come up behind him as he reaches his room. He unlocks the door.

“Clint—“

He stops on the threshold and leans his forehead against the doorframe. He closes his eyes. The anger has turned sideways, into something much heavier and more oppressive. It’s back to painful again. “Please leave me alone,” he tells her quietly.

“Just give me a minute, and then I’ll leave if you want me to.” She, too, suddenly sounds tired and subdued now. “I promise.”  

Clint pushes away from the door with a sigh. “Fine.”

He settles on the edge of his mattress, leans over and turns the small bedside lamp. She steps into the warm light and closes the door silently behind her. He folds his hands in his lap and locks his eyes on the floor by her feet as he waits for her to speak.

Seconds of silence go by, and neither of them move. Then he hears her shift.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”   

“Didn’t mean what?” He looks up. He needs her to very specific about this, because she has made an artform of misdirection by words, and he doesn't want any ambiguities here.

“That I think you’re like them.” Her mouth sets in an unhappy line. ”Don’t ever think that. Yes, I group what happened back there into the same category as all those jobs I’ve done.” Her voice softens. “But that doesn’t mean I sort _you_ into the same category as those people.”

He looks away and moments later he feels the mattress dip as she sits down next to him. “Look at me,” she says quietly. Her fingers are firm as she coaxes him to meet her eyes. She cups his face. “You’re nothing like them,” she tells him, her voice low and very serious. “You’re so much more. _We’re_ so much more. You and me. We’re stronger than this.”

“Are we?” He hates that he has to ask, that after all these years he can’t have more faith in them than this. She’s the one supposedly with trust issues.

“Yes.”

There’s so much certainty in that single word that Clint’s throat goes a little tight. She pulls him in and he turns his face into the softness of her neck. “I don’t know how to do this,” he admits.

She's quiet for a moment, then she sighs. “Me neither. This,” she says, and her hand makes a small gesture between them. “This is new. Someone else in the equation. It’s always just been me.”

“I wanna—” He clenches his hands into fists in the darkness between them, unable to find words to describe just how much he wants to hurt them again. Kill them again. All of them. Sharpton and his crew. All the ones Natasha has had to deal with on her own.  

She hums, a quiet short sound that lets him know she heard the words he didn’t say. “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “They don’t matter.”

He swallows. Closes his eyes. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

“I know.” Her fingers curl around the back of his neck for a moment, warm and steady. “Me, too. For having to do that to you back there.”

He starts shaking his head, but thinks better of it. Who’s he to refuse to acknowledge her part in it, to deny her the chance to apologize for it when that’s what he’s been desperate for from her. He nods. “Yeah.”

Natasha shifts and he starts to pull back, but her fingers tighten and he relaxes back against her. He closes his eyes and tells the newly awoken voice of doubt inside to shut up. They’re okay. She says so and if they're to have any kind of solid working relationship, any kind of releationship, he has to trust her on that. Has to trust her when she says what happened isn't going to change anything, that he's not _that_ to her. He feels a sting of self-loathing for being so dependent on her, so easily affected by what she thinks of him, it makes him vulnerable, but there it is. She's his Achilles heel. He knows he's stupidly quick to jump to conclusions when it comes to people's motivations, but not scanning for untruths and hidden agendas is like deciding to stop breathing. He can do it for a while, forcing himself, but in the end it's futile.

Sometimes he thinks it's in his genes to be suspicious and paranoid. His father's go-to theme when drunk was accusing Clint's mother of whoring herself out to other men, talking trash behind his back, and Clint doesn't know how many times he heard Barney desperately swear up and down that they hadn't said anything to anyone about what went on behind the closed doors of the Barton home. It's a legacy Clint doesn't want, one he tries to curb, and he really should know better when it comes to Natasha. He should know she's not like other people, that what just happened was his old mindghosts rearing their heads and nothing else. She has proved herself everyday since they met, has stuck by him when any sane person would have washed their hands of him and left him to his own devices.

He exhales and makes a consious decision to take her words at face value. He owes her that much.

They sit in silence. His position isn’t comfortable, but Natasha is warm and keeps playing with his hair, so he stays where he is for a long time. Long enough that he’s slipping towards that pre-sleep state of loose relaxation when Natasha suddenly extricates herself and he blinks his eyes open.  

“I’m hungry. I want waffles.”

Clint straightens up and rubs at his face. “What, now?”

She stands. “Since we skipped the whole dinner-and-a-movie thing back there in that garage I figure the least you can do is buy me breakfast.”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

She holds out her hand. “There’s a twenty-four seven place a few miles past Tyson.”

Clint takes her hand and gets to his feet. He stretches his back with a groan. “You realize we skipped the dinner-and-a-movie thing years ago, right?”

She smirks at him. “All the more reason for you to buy me breakfast.”

He huffs out a tired laugh. He knows what this sudden change in mood is. This is Natasha switching direction, roping them back onto familiar and comfortable ground, away from the brink, and he realizes that's what she's been trying to do all this time.

For the first time in weeks he is more than happy to go along with it.

The sound of their steps echos down the empty corridors as they walk to the car. At this time of night, with no operations on-going and no teams in or outbound, the huge residential area is deserted. The only people they see are a maintenance team working on something electrical in a manhole, a security patrol and an insomniac who shuffles past them without looking up.

“We got them good, didn’t we?” he says quietly as they sit in the car and wait for the outer gates to open for them.  

“Yes. We did,” she says.

 

The End 


End file.
